


In the Night

by Radicalkay



Series: Hurt and Healing [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, OT3, a continuation of my other fic, but also finn/rey, hints of poe/finn, none of them can sleep, theres like - Freeform, this is endgame finn/poe/rey so, this is rey centric because i love her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:01:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6022903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radicalkay/pseuds/Radicalkay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>/ / Curled up in ratty blankets she’d found stowed in the Falcon, Rey breathed in. Actually interacting with people was a bit trickier then she’d imagined. Never once had she thought she might long for the peace and solitude of Jakku, where only the sands would whisper to her in her dreams. / /</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Night

The first night back she didn’t sleep at all, bursting with excitement and joy and staying up until he sun spilled through the trees. Luke and the General had vanished not long after they exited the ship, a resigned weariness about them. Rey could feel happiness, but it was muted, dimmed by death and loss and regret.

A bit lost after being under Luke’s instruction for a year and thrust back into the bustle of humanity, Rey floundered. There were people looking at her, telling her she was a hero, that she was a legend, that she’s brought Luke Skywalker back.

She just wanted to curl up next to Finn and listen to stories about the base.

They’d led her back to their quarters, (she saw Finn’s clothes draped over the bed, the two cups sitting on the counter and the way that Finn leaned into Poe without even realizing.) Something cut into her, knowing life had kept moving when she went away, that the stars didn’t stand still just because she wished them to.

(Until they collapsed into a pile on the floor and Finn pressed his leg firmly up against hers and Poe sat close enough that their arms brushed)

The night glowed with laughter, with stories of Finn stumbling around base, making a fool of himself in front of new recruits and Poe accidentally running face first into his plane because he was trying to show off. It took no convincing for Rey to bring out her new skills, and she very impressively launched a pillow into Finn’s face when he asked if she’d liked having the company of only a droid and large, hairy wookie on a planet where it never stopped raining. (“Come _on_ Rey had had to have smelled terrible!”)

She thought, perhaps, it was the first time she’d felt safe.

Their reunion didn’t last for long, for it was barely the next day-cycle and then they were gone, scattered to opposite corners of the base. While she was meditation, Rey reached out and hummed lightly when her beacons of light shined brighter and closer then ever before.

\--

The next night posed a problem. Rey had nowhere to go. There was no room assigned to her, and she very well couldn’t sleep in the med bay. With this in mind she nodded to Finn and Poe. (Who were subconsciously tangled in each other, Finns check pressed against Poe’s shoulder, Poe’s fingers looped around Finn’s wrist, it was almost beautiful how their life-force beat in rhythm) Finn sleepily reached out and snaked his hand around her wrist, pulling her close to smack a kiss against her cheek.

At the sudden burst of touch Rey flinched, and then flushed brightly. “Night Rey, are you sure you don’t want to bunk with us?” (She felt the lie rise off her tongue smoothly, effortlessly, and she pushed down the ugly feeling curling in her stomach) “Master Luke’s sister assigned me a room when I got here!” she reassured them.

Curled up in ratty blankets she’d found stowed in the Falcon, Rey breathed in. Actually interacting with people was a bit trickier then she’d imagined. Never once had she thought she might long for the peace and solitude of Jakku, where only the sands would whisper to her in her dreams.

\--

Master Luke watched her carefully during their lessons, and she knows it is he who sends the General to talk to her. She knows he worries and she wishes he didn’t.

She knows because Finn and Poe have not noticed the trip in her step, the dullness in her eyes. He tells her to sleep and she fires it back at him. He cannot pretend she does not feel his presence at night, when everyone’s minds are asleep and yet she can hear him, _feel_ him projecting across the planet, echo’s of loss and mourning. Sometimes there are two forces, two sad broken lights missing a third that pulse brightly in the night.

\--

It’s been a week back on base when Rey realizes she hasn’t slept, save several seconds of restless dreaming. Weariness has begun to weigh on her limbs, and the prospect of sleep drags at her eyes. Sleeping inside, _confined_ inside a room where she cannot see or sense the stars feels like suffocating.

Lying where her bed does not shift and sway with her breathe and movements as the sand did is something she has yet to grow accustomed to. Her body feels wrong on a bed, feels wrong sitting still. For 19 years of her life she slept soundly through the cold winds that whipped through the AT-AT at night and haunted howling noises that echoed across the dunes after the sun left the sky. She simply didn’t know what to _do,_ how to adjust to something that stayed stationary under her as she slept. How could she relax on something that was warm and comftorble?

Comfort was not something Rey was accustomed to.

The harsh sands of Jakku had only taught Rey to survive, there was nothing written in the code of the dessert that allowed for weakness, that allowed for a moment of rest. She could not remember a single second were she had been given anything _nice_ on Jakku, everything had been won with blood. _And pain, and loss. There was not one happy memory of Jakku, of its land that took and took and took until Rey had nothing left to give._

Even on the island with Master Luke, the air was sticky with sea salt and chilled by the storms to the east. She slept on a makeshift bed made of linens and dirt, and although it did not shape to her body like the sand she was still _outside_ , she could sit feel the hum of the earth beneath her fingers and taste life in the air. Inside the base she felt _trapped_ at night, surrounded by concrete walls that blocked the flow of the world outside.

The base was loud, even at night. During the day there was an endless chatter and whir of engines leaving and taking off, and at night there was a dull hum of static electricity running through the wires.

She could feel all of it.

It didn’t help that there were _people._ So many voices and thoughts and feelings overflowing to a point where it was painful for Rey to _feel_. She knew how to explore with her senses, delve her way into the swirling emotions of the mind. Not yet did she know how to stop the never ending flow of information that refused to let her rest. How could she sleep when at all hours of the day people were thinking and talking and feeling?

\--

Finn didn’t belong in D’quar. He didn’t know how to deal with not being in uniform, he didn’t know how to talk to people not in a stilted, formal tone, he didn’t know how to _not_ be a storm trooper. He could barely sleep more then five hours, and it _pained_ him to wake up and just lie there. (He didn’t tell Poe this; he knew how much the pilot cherished the mornings when Finn chose to stay instead of waking early to run for an hour. Or two.)

He didn’t miss the sideways glances people gave him sometimes, when they thought he wasn’t looking. (He was always looking, always on alert. People were always looking to report others in the Order to gain a higher status. He'd never be able to shake the suspicion residing in his bones.) 

He didn’t want to get kicked out, he wanted the weariness in his bones to go away, the crick in his spine to fade and the pounding headache from being off his meds to cease. In the order they gave them drugs to eat, drugs to sleep, drugs to make them follow orders. Without them, Finn found himself in a constant state of numbness. Poe tried to help, as did the medical examiners and General Organa. They asked him if he wanted anything to take the edge off, to make the pain go away.

(He refused it all, he would make it through the long nights and endless days without getting hooked on something he had no control over. He kept himself grounded through Poe’s touch and Rey’s presence. He would sleep eventually.)

Finn would adapt. He always did. _They’d always told him he had the most potential_.

\--

Poe wondered when Kylo Ren would let go of his mind, would release his dreams from his twisted grasp and  _let him sleep_.  _Ben, god Ben, why did you have to do this why dd you have to go._ In the months following his abduction, Poe rarely slept longer then a couple hours. He didnt tell Finn that he spent most of the night staring up at the ceiling, wondering if the wall above him could open up so the sky could swallow him whole.

\--

There isn’t a night that passes that Poe sleeps through. He no longer remembers how it feels to be fully rested, how it feels to not be shaken awake by tremors and monsters that lurk in the shadows of his mind during the day, only to claw their way into his dreams at night. Not even the steady hand of Finn pressed against his back or curled against his stomach can push down the terrors that lurk in the darkness.

(Not even the slow, winding tendrils of Rey’s life force drifting down the halls at night, looking into dreams an chasing away the nightmares can cure Poe. She’s tried, she wishes she could take the gripping reminisce of Kylo Ren and rip them from the depth of Poe’s nightmare.)

When Poe starts at night, Finn is there, _always there_ , kissing his nightmares away. Sometimes, when neither of them can sleep because the terror that is found at night is too great, they talk for hours and hours.

(Finn can’t sleep either, he can barely _breath_ on base because he feels he doesn’t belong, he felt he pull of the order at his skin and his soul and he knows in his heart _he’s going to fuck this up they’ll find him, they’ll find him and reprogram him they’ll wipe his memories of Poe, of Rey and fill him with hate nothing but rich, ugly hate he can’t sleep because if he closes his eye’s he knows he’ll wake up and find this is all a dream, a wonderful, hopeful dream._ )

Its one of those nights when Finn sighs deeply, his eyes weighted with worry and his fingers fumbling as he tries to get ready for bed. “I’m worried about her.” He states abruptly, and Poe doesn’t need to ask whom. “I don’t think she’s been sleeping. I don’t even know _where_ she’s been sleeping! I know she doesn’t have a bunk, I asked the General yesterday so I could bring some stuff to her room cause I know she doesn’t have anything-“ Finn broke off, chest welling in anguish.

“She doesn’t even have a room assigned to her.” He finished. Poe wonders if that’s why her soul wanders the halls at night, begging for rest. Finn wonders if that’s why her eye’s stopped looking bright all at one.

Rey wonders why she can’t find solitude, not even under the stars.

\--

She gets caught all at once; by Luke and Leia and Poe and Finn before she can weasel her way out of their knowing looks and curious minds. She’d ben experimenting with places to sleep, for the Falcon didn’t offer much in the area of comfort. Her most recent sleeping place was curled up in a pile of blankets at the edge of the trees right outside the barracks. It was cold, but nothing Rey wasn’t used to. Underneath the small, twinkling lights embedded in the blue above her, Rey slept.

Or, her mind wandered and she danced among the night sky while her eyes drifted closed. Her brain wouldn’t rest, but at least her body could cease moving for a short while.

She couldn't sense them coming, the four bodies of life moving towards her at an alarming speed. She felt them through a dream, a haze of a nightmare coming in the form of dark figures grasping at her legs, pinning her down, _taking her mind, taking her body, taking everything that made her human-_

“Rey?” She jerked awake, scrambling away from the outstretched hand of her friend, away from the concern radiating off of Poe, the regret from Leia, the worry from Luke. She didn’t need it she didn’t _want it._ She’d taken care of herself for her entire life; she didn’t need to start depending on people now.

“But you don’t _need_ to take care of yourself anymore. You’re allowed to ask for help my young padawan.” Starting at the fact that Master Luke had picked up on her wayward thoughts, Rey averted her eyes to the ground, refusing to meet her master’s gaze. “There are many time when you cannot do things alone. There is no shame in asking for assistance, especially from those who care deeply for you.” Looping her arms around her legs, she curled in on herself, letting her eyes drift shut and pressing her cheek against her knee. She wondered if she stayed here long enough their eyes would stop boring into her, if they would just let her melt into the soft green of the forest.

The shuffle of feet against the ground signified that someone was leaving, _her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach because of course they would leave, what allegiance did that have to her?_ Lifting her head, expecting to find no one but the dark trees staring back at her, she was surprised to see Finn and Poe, _her two boys her beacons the only thing tethering her to the fabric of the universe._

(She wanted to sob she wanted to break she wanted to shatter into a million pieces.)

“Rey?” her heart jumped to her throat at the gentleness of his tone. No one had ever extended a gentle hand to her.

Caught in-between Finn and Poe’s soft eyes and the cold, hard truth that she’d been _lying_ to the only people she even _knew_ , the only people she _cared_ about, Rey crumpled. She collapsed into Finn’s arms, letting him draw her into his chest. Her body shook and rattled but Poe knelt on the other side of her and stilled the shaking in her hands. _They held her together, they pieces the shards of her mind back together, melded their three bodies into one, one bright, pulsing light. Their bodies around her still the noise; they stilled the noise and filled the gaping silence of the base. The voices hadn’t stopped reeling in her head in so long. She didn’t know if she’d ever felt this quiet bliss, even on the empty desert of Jakku._

She wasn’t sure when she slipped off, wasn’t sure when her eyes shut and her body went limp but as she did her mind flickered between consciousness and her dreams. All Rey knew were the warm arms she was cradled in and the steady presence at her side. Anything besides that was irrelevant, and she transcended through a dreamland filled with floating planets and swirling moons, glued together by glowing fingers that sewed the seams of the universe together.

She felt them slip her onto a bed, under the covers and _the sound came rushing back her eyes snapped open it hurt it hurt it hurt it hurt-_

“Stop-“ she gasped, fingers wrapping around Finn’s wrist. “Please don’t leave.” She whispered brokenly. She knew they could feel it, the hurt and the need pouring out of her soul.

“ _God_ Rey I’m sorry I’m so sorry-“

Rey didn’t want them to apologize, she wanted to slip off into sleep and possibly not wake up for days.

  _Years_  

The bed sank as Finn clambered on, circling his body around Rey's, his legs tangled in hers and his hand clasped around her wrist. Poe slipped on the other side of her, looping his arm around her waist.

Finn's eyes drifted shut, his nose pressed against Rey's neck and the warmth of her body lulling him to sleep. The pain pulsing behind his eyes faded away, replaced by a smooth, warm melody that reminded him of the music Poe would pluck from his guitar late at night in the recreation hall.

Poe had once wondered if he would even sleep again without seeing the dark imprint of Kylo Ren behind his eyes. He waited for the nightmares to start, for the ghost of the jedi to haunt his dreams. All he found was a soft, gentle hand pressed over his eyes, and a steady presence settled in his mind keeping the darkness at bay.

Rey was safe, she was protected and one. The bodies one either side of her were home, the tether she had been searching for. Her bed did not move underneath her, but _they_  shifted around her, reminding her of a home that was never hers. The stars buzzed, though not enough to keep her awake. They sang a lullaby that sent her to sleep, that kept her eyes from opening and her mind from wandering.

_They were three but they were one, one among the stars but down on the ground they were simply very tired humans that wanted nothing but to sleep._

_And they did._

**Author's Note:**

> sry this took so long i am a v slow. im also working on a fbi au fic?? that may or may not ever actually happen


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